Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 in the Lincolnshire village of Somersby. His father was the rector there, and had, besides Alfred, eleven other children. And here about the Rectory garden, orchard and fields, the Tennyson children played at knights and warriors. Beyond the field flowed a brook—

Of the garden and the fields and of the brook especially, Alfred kept a memory all through his long life. But at seven he was sent to live with his grandmother and go to school at Louth, about ten miles away. "How I did hate that school!" he said, long afterwards, so we may suppose the years he spent there were not altogether happy. But when he was eleven he went home again to be taught by his father, until he went to Cambridge.

At home, Alfred read a great deal, especially poetry. He wrote, too, romances like Sir Walter Scott's, full of battles, epics in the manner of Pope, plays, and blank verse. He wrote so much that his father said, "If Alfred die, one of our greatest poets will have gone." And besides writing poems, Alfred, who was one of the big children, used to tell stories to the little ones,—stories these of knights and ladies, giants and dragons and all manner of wonderful things. So the years passed, and one day the two boys, Charles and Alfred, resolved to print their poems, and took them to a bookseller in Louth. He gave them 20 pounds for the manuscript, but more than half was paid in books out of the shop. So the grand beginning was made. But the little book caused no stir in the great world. No one knew that a poet had broken silence.

The next year Charles and Alfred went to Cambridge. Alfred soon made many friends among the clever young men of his day, chief among them being Arthur Hallam, whose father was a famous historian.

At college Tennyson won the Chancellor's prize for a poem on Timbuctoo, and the following year he published a second little volume of poems. This, though kindly received by some great writers, made hardly more stir than the little volume by "Two Brothers."

Tennyson did not take a degree at Cambridge, for, owing to his father's failing health, he was called home. He left college, perhaps with no very keen regret, for his heart was not in sympathy with the teaching. In his undergraduate days he wrote some scathing lines about it. You "teach us nothing," he said, "feeding not the heart." But he did remember with tenderness that Cambridge had been the spot where his first and warmest friendship had been formed.

Soon after Alfred left college, his father died very suddenly. Although the father was now gone the Tennysons did not need to leave their home, for the new rector did not want the house. So life in the Rectory went quietly on; friends came and went, the dearest friend of all, Arthur Hallam, came often, for he loved the poet's young sister, and one day they were to be married. It was a peaceful happy time—

Long days were spent reading poetry and talking of many things—

And amid this pleasant country life the poet worked on, and presently another little book of poems appeared. Still fame did not come, and one severe and blundering review kept Tennyson, it is said, from publishing anything more for ten years.

But now there fell upon him what was perhaps the darkest sorrow of his life. Arthur Hallam, who was traveling on the Continent, died suddenly at Vienna. When the news came to Tennyson that his friend was gone—

for a time joy seemed blotted out of life, and only that he might help to comfort his sister did he wish to live, for—

As an outcome of this grief we have one of Tennyson's finest poems, In Memoriam. It is an elegy which we place beside Lycidas  and Adonais. But In Memoriam  strikes yet a sadder note. For in Lycidas  and Adonais  Milton and Shelley mourned kindred souls rather than dear loved friends. To Tennyson, Arthur Hallam was "The brother of my love"—

In Memoriam  is a group of poems rather than one long poem—

It is written in a meter which Tennyson believed he had invented, but which Ben Jonson and others had used before him. Two hundred years before Jonson had written a little elegy beginning—

Here again we see that our literature of to-day is no new born thing, but rooted in the past. Jonson's poem, however, is a mere trifle, Tennyson's one of the great things of our literature. The first notes of In Memoriam  were written when sorrow was fresh, but it was not till seventeen years later that it was given to the world. It is perhaps the most perfect monument ever raised to friendship. For in mourning his own loss Tennyson mourned the loss of all the world. " 'I' is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking thro' him," he says.

After the prologue, the poem tells of the first bitter hopeless grief, of how friends try to comfort the mourners.

And yet even now he can say—

And so the months glide by, and the first Christmas comes, "The time draws near the birth of Christ," the bells ring—

But when Christmas comes again the year has brought calm if not forgetfulness—

The years pass on, the brothers and sisters grow up and scatter, and at last the old home has to be left. Sadly the poet takes leave of all the loved spots in house and garden. Strangers will soon come there, people who will neither care for nor love the dear familiar scene—

The poem moves on, and once again in the new home Christmas comes round. Here everything is strange, the very bells seem like strangers' voices. But with this new life new strength has come, and sorrow has henceforth lost its sting. And with the ringing of the New Year bells a new tone comes into the poem, a tone no more of despair, but of hope.

After this the tone of the poem changes and the poet says—

One more event is recorded, the wedding of the poet's youngest sister, nine years after the death of his friend. And with this note of gladness and hope in the future the poem ends.